


we are softest always (in our beginnings)

by Beguile



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Catharsis, Comfort, Exhaustion, Fluff, Friendship, It's all comfort, Kissing, M/M, Requited Love, Swatting, Swearing, Swimming, sleeping, we could have had it allllllll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:00:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24340219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/pseuds/Beguile
Summary: It’s Eddie who gets him out of the Deadlights and brings him safely home.Alternate ending. One-shot.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 62





	1. Richie

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this stunning artwork](https://inkandowl.tumblr.com/post/615069004582797312/hes-sleeping-off-the-deadlights) I found from [bluesyturtle](https://paperwarewolf.tumblr.com/%E2%80%9D>paperwarewolf</a>.%20I%20also%20drew%20elements%20from%20<a%20href=)’s [No Doubt in My Mind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20822507/chapters/49497173) because it’s amazing. 
> 
> Title is a quotation from Isra Al-Thibeh. 
> 
> Readers, I hope you enjoy.

* * *

-Richie-

* * *

There’s a line from _The Princess Bride_ about the best kiss – the most passionate, the most pure. And how this one, the one that Wesley and Buttercup share at the end of the movie (Richie never read the book), this kiss left them all behind.

Richie wanted that. He’d never admit it, but he wanted that. He wanted to give the kiss equivalent of the middle finger to Romeo and Juliet, to Scarlett and Rhett, to Ingrid Bergman and that guy she kissed in _Casablanca_ , to Wesley and Buttercup and all the other losers in film. He wanted the kiss that left them all behind.

Instead, what he got was Eddie Kaspbrak’s lips smooshed against his while he lay prostrate on the floor of a cave, a giant interdimensional clown-spider screeching in the background while visions of Eddie impaled by a spider tentacle play through his head. Not the stuff of great romances. Not even the stuff of great horror stories. Richie can’t even call it comedy: it’s just sad. One more sad day in the life of the Trashmouth, who finally gets kissed by the man he’s spent his whole life loving while they’re fighting for their lives against a child-eating sewer clown monster.

And _fuck that_. Fuck the clown monster and fuck the tragedy. Fuck sad, pathetic Trashmouth. What the hell kind of loser has the balls to talk about masturbating at tentacle porn in his forties to an audience of strangers but can’t tell a childhood best friend that they’re the love of his life? What kind of asshole runs scared from that but faces down a giant clown spider? Richie isn’t running. He’s grabbing life by the balls or the neck or _whatever_ and he’s getting out of this cave. They’re all getting out of this cave together.

And he’s getting his kiss. That epic, stop-everything-in-its-tracks kiss. Richie’s getting that. He even goes for it as he grabs Eds by the arms and rolls out of the way of the pointy thing poised for stabbing. Admittedly, it’s a bad time to make out with somebody though. Richie ends up biting his own tongue and Eddie smacks at him because they’re “in the middle of a fight, asshole!” The other Losers are shouting, giving chase, and Richie figures _fine_. It’s only been his whole life. He can wait a few more minutes. But then he is getting that kiss.

* * *

Time catches up to Richie as the well house is sucked back to hell. He’s aware of how quiet the street is, how strangely unaffected Derry is by how strange Derry is. He tears his eyes from the crater to look at Eds, transfixed, the site of their childhood horror finally, mercifully gone forever.

It’s time. Now, here, in the wake of the destruction. Richie goes to grab Eds by both shoulders, pull Eds’s tiny little frame to his chest and never, ever let him go. They’ve got forty years of kissing to make up for on this street, and damn it, they’re going to do it. Before Richie can take him, though, Eds is swept up in motion of the other Losers.

Richie opens his mouth but not a single sound comes out. He trots to catch up, but Eddie’s under Bill’s arm. Then he’s under Bev’s. And then he’s with Mike. Nobody else is saying anything, and normally, Richie would be shattering the silence. He’s got plenty of words building up in his brain: things like ‘fuck’ and ‘why’ and ‘Eddie Spaghetti, get your fine little ass over here and finish what you started in that cave.’ But all of it feels cheap and useless and inappropriate. Fuck, Richie’s aware that it would be inappropriate, and that always only ever makes him want to say things more, yet here, now, it holds him to silence. Holds him to doubt.

Maybe the kiss didn’t mean anything. Maybe the only reason Eds did it was because it was how Ben snapped Bev out of the Deadlight 27 years ago. Maybe Richie’s looking forward to something that isn’t going to happen. Eds is married, for fuck’s sake. He made his choice and it’s not Richie, and a kiss in the face of certain death, especially the closed lips mash-up bullshit, is not exactly a confession of affection. More like the last ditch effort of a man trying to save his friend.

Their footsteps lead them to the gorge. None of them bother taking off their clothes. Starting with Ben, they take a leap off the edge. Richie watches Eddie go and wonders if he should just leave. They did it. They killed the thing. They have lives to get back to, _wives_ to get back to. Best to just get the leaving over with.

Richie’s feet have other plans. They carry him off the edge and into the water. He clutches his glasses to keep from losing them. One of the lenses is already busted, so why bother trying to save the pair? The rush of falling carries all the doubt away from him, and when he hits the water, the rest of the nightmare washes out of him too. The thought of Eddie dying is already a distant memory. He’ll probably dream about it later the way Bev dreamed about their deaths, but Richie surfaces feeling like it’s Derry that’s the nightmare. It’s the monster that he’s waking up from to find the world is a safe and forgiving place. 

He finds a rock to sit while the other Losers swim, the sun baking against his dark hair and piercing through the cracks in his glasses. Everything shimmers in the waning days of summer. The world has this magical glow. And right on cue, who should come swimming up but Eds.

“Scoot over,” Eds says, not waiting for Richie to do it as he climbs onto the rock.

Richie stays his ground on principle, even pushing Eddie back into the water. “Get your own rock.”

“Come on, Richie.”  
  
“Ten-minute rule,” Richie says.

Eddie’s face flushes red. He stops treading water with fury. “Oh, so you admit there was a ten-minute rule!?”

“Guys,” Bill says from somewhere in the water.

Richie isn’t paying attention. He’s only got eyes for Eddie. Eddie, who could have known, all this time. Eddie, who could have been his first kiss. Eddie, who could have died today, taking away the last chance for Richie to ever tell him…

The words aren’t there. Nothing is. Richie’s head is cool and filled only with wanting. Eddie is at the rock again, this time scaling Richie’s leg and shoulder to get on it. Richie wrestles with him. Eddie grabs his glasses; Richie, fumbling for them, knocks them straight into the water.

“My glasses!” Richie says, swatting at him. 

Eddie blurry form looms next to him. “You threw them in!”  
  
“You knocked them out of my hand!”

“You wouldn’t let me on the rock!”

“Guys!” Bill calls.

Richie can hear splashing. The flash of red in his periphery tells him Bev’s swimming for his glasses. Another splash tell him someone else is too: Bill or Ben, someone going to peel through the crystalline sunshine towards her. Someone about to steal the thunder away from every great lover in history because they’ve loved Bev their whole life, and she’s loved them back.

It’s not a matter of them not getting that. Good luck to her and Ben (probably). But if they get it, why doesn’t Richie get it too? Ben’s kiss for Bev and Eddie’s kiss for him had the same damn effect. Why shouldn’t they get the same damn special moment?

Eds is still flailing around on the damn rock. And that could be their story. That is their story. But Richie isn’t good with that, not with the way summer is blurring in front of his eyes. He puts his hands on Eddie’s chest and knocks him in the water, and then Richie dives in after him.

They’re spiralling around the way otters do. Eddie still trying to fight with him even though they’re both on the hunt for glasses. Richie’s vision is useless. He’s better off with his eyes closed, grasping at Eddie and the lake bottom in the dark. But suddenly Eddie’s hand is wrapped around his, their fingers are gripping the edge of Richie’s glasses. Richie’s eyes pop open to reveal watery sunshine and Eddie. The giant blur that is Eddie Kaspbrak, who Richie is never, ever going to forget, ever again. They’re never going to forget this moment ever again. Even if it’s all wrong: even if Eddie’s going back to his wife and Richie’s going back to LA, they’re going to have this. 

He grabs Eds by the shoulder and pulls him close, and miraculously, his aim is perfect. It should be perfect: Richie’s been practicing in his head for decades. His lungs are pounding from holding his breath and his heart is in his throat, terrified that Eds is going to swim away, but from their second their lips meet, it’s different from the cave. It’s better. This isn’t desperate life-saving lip-mashing. This is a kiss. A real kiss. With hunger and longing, slightly open mouths and more than a little lake water. Eds really should be trying to get away, but the two of them are letting the current rock them, letting their own buoyancy carry them to the surface where the sunlight pours over them, where the breeze is there to greet their wet skin as their hands over move over each other’s cheeks and shoulders.

There’s some hooping and hollering. Richie slowly draws away from Eddie, relishing every precious second that he has to be this close, this close and not in peril. Important distinction. He waits for Eddie to do the same, but Eddie hasn’t moved to do anything other than tread water.

Richie can’t see Eddie’s expression, which is good. He has to go by feel, and the only thing he feels is the two of them swimming together, gripping each other. The way their foreheads bow and meet, cool water dripping between them. Eddie’s lips brushing his once more.

“Did you get your glasses?” he asks quietly.

Richie realizes that his hands are full of Eddie and only Eddie. “I thought you had them.”  
  
“I thought you had them,” Eddie says. “You were the one who dropped them!”  
  
“You knocked them out-!” Richie stops. “No, we’re not – SHUT UP.”

“Shut up…?”

Richie kisses him again. “Shut up.” He kisses Eddie again, and again, and again, and they don’t stop kissing. If they never stop kissing, they never have to leave, they never have to die, the summer never has to end.

“Hey, Richie,” Eddie says, breathless, between kisses, “Rich…Richie...” Eddie puts their foreheads together and holds them there, his lips just out of reach. Richie feels like he’s back on the verge, but this time he doesn’t have anything left. He wants that fall, that plunge, and to never hit the water.

Eddie kisses him one more time. Eddie does it. “Hang on.” He disappears under the water, and Richie floats there, stunned, the ghost of Eddie’s lips on his mouth. He’s sinking, and he’s chasing that feeling, wanting to sink, when an arm finds its way around him. Then another. The other Losers coming in for hugs, holding him at the surface, their happiness and smiles so loud and warm that Richie is buoyed by them. They take up actual, physical space in the water.

Eddie resurfaces. He gasps for breath while shoving Richie’s glasses onto his face. His hands smooth over Richie’s cheeks, down his neck, and Richie would really sink then. He’s got nothing left. Nothing. He’s gotten it all, and he doesn’t have the strength to be anymore. He feels his eyes rolling back in his head the way they did in the deadlights, but now it’s just Eddie in front of him. Eddie.

“Come on,” Eddie says quietly. Richie feels his hand wrapping into the front of his shirt and puling him along through the water, pulling him further into the summer sunlight.

* * *

Happy Reading!


	2. Eddie

* * *

-Eddie-

* * *

Richie isn’t going to make it out of the water. He gets to the shore with Eddie pulling him along, and whatever parts of him surface sag back down towards the water. His head, his shoulders, his arms. He crawls for a bit but there’s not enough water to support his weight. He ends up face down on the beach.

“Come on,” Eddie says, taking one of Richie’s arms.

“No, go,” Richie garbles through the water, “I’ll catch up.”

Bill appears: “Rich.” He hoists Richie up, making way for Ben to come under the other arm.

Eddie pushes his way past, and Bill and Ben aren’t about to pick on him. They help get Richie onto Eddie’s shoulders, and they even back off with Eddie assures them, “I got him. I got him.” 

They believe him, which is probably a mistake. Eddie’s legs shake under him. He gets a grip on Richie’s waist, trying to regroup, but it’s no actual use. Richie’s over six feet of limpening limbs. Bones flopping out of joint, eyes glazed over and mouth hanging open.

“Need a little help here, Rich,” Eddie says with a groan.

Richie tries to prop himself up on his own feet. Doesn’t work. Eddie tightens his grip. “Thanks, Richie. Really fucking helpful…”   
  
Richie’s arm tightens over his shoulders like he’s going for a hug and his head falls in a way that his lips brush against Eddie’s gouged cheek. Eddie flinches, recoils, and Richie’s face drops further, flopping on his neck. And it can stay there. He can stay right here.

“You sure you don’t need a hand?” Ben asks again. 

“I’m fine!” Richie says with surprising volume right before his face mashes into where Eddie’s neck meets his shoulder. “Totally fine. Really fine. We killed the clown, guys! Yay!” He draws his arm so tight that it slips off Eddie’s shoulder and Eddie is straight-up being choked. “We killed the clown…”   
  
“That’s what you’re happy about,” Eddie says. He gets the strength to pull Richie a few steps from that. “Yay, we killed our childhood enemy. Better kiss your best friend.”   
  
Richie stands up to his full height. He pulls his arm from Eddie’s shoulders. He isn’t steady on his feet, but he fights back when Eddie tries to pull him back. It’s wrong, so wrong, that they should be fighting like this, but it also kind of feels right to Eddie, feels deserved. Like what the fuck has he done to earn something like this? He’s a coward and a weakling who let his mom push him around his whole childhood before marrying a person to do the same for him in adulthood. He, Eddie, doesn’t get the luxury of finding out that Richie, Richie Tozier, secretly loved him the whole time. Kind of shit only happens in the movies, and even there, one of them would have to die for it to really be true.

“You think that’s what I kissed you about?” Richie says. His face is crumbling behind his glasses. “You think…?”

Eddie waits for the punchline, and then he waits for the real tragedy to sink in, because that’s where this is headed. It’s heading for hurt. He opens his mouth to try and ask, “Why else?” but Richie’s leg is giving out from under him. Eddie rushes forward to catch him before he ends up back in the water.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says.

“Fuck you, man,” Richie says, gripping him even more tightly this time. “I wouldn’t do that!”   
  
“Okay, okay! I’m sorry! Hey!” Eddie gives Richie a shake and holds him even tighter. Maybe it’s his cowardice again, but he can’t be the one who rips this to shreds. “Hey, you just stood up. Can you do that again, hey?” Richie’s eyelids are starting to droop. The strength’s leaving his grasp. Eddie shakes him again. “Hey, asshole. Hey! I fucked your mom! Huh! I did that! And she was a better kisser than you!”

Richie’s smile is as tired as he is. His words die in his mouth. The only response he’s got is to put his hand on the back of Eddie’s neck and hold on tight.

For a second, it’s like he’s back in the cave. The memory of the clown is waning, but the feeling he got when the Deadlights had Richie, that feeling of his cowardice stepping the fuck out of his way, of all his fears vanishing, of there being nothing in the world that could stop him, not clowns and not Richie being a God damn giant. There is nothing that can out a stop to this.

That’s what Eddie feels as he gets Richie moving. 

* * *

The sight of the inn gives Eddie a bust of strength he ends up needing. It has the exact opposite effect on Richie, who takes their arrival as a sign that he can give up on whatever little help he’s managed to offer so far.

“Little more, come on,” Eddie says encouragingly.

“Unh…” Richie adds unhelpfully. His right leg buckles at the knee so his next step nearly takes them to the floor.

“No!” Eddie hauls him upright again. He waves off help from the others. “We’re not sleeping here! We’re not! Who javelined a clown-spider monster for you? Huh? Who kissed you out of the deadlights? Who fucking found the glasses that you dropped into the gorge? ME! I did that! And now I don’t care if I have to drag you every step! But you are getting up those stairs and you are-“   
  
Richie’s withering moan gives Eddie no time to react. The little bit of strength left in Richie’s lanky arms and legs gives out, and Eddie doesn’t have anything else to give. They’re going down. Even the other Losers can’t do more than help make sure it’s not too painful when they end up on the ground. Bill and Ben are again on hand to carry Richie. Eddie shoos them away, along with Bev and Mike who are looking to help him up the stairs. “No, no,” he says, regrouping. He grabs Richie under the arms and heaves him towards the bottom steps.

“Fuck you,” Richie mutters. He flails his arms around weakly. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you: let me sleep. I want to sleep.”   
  
“You can sleep in bed, Richie,” Bev says.

Richie stops his flailing and holds onto Eddie for dear life. “No, no…I wanna sleep here. I’m gonna sleep here.”   
  
Eddie drops onto the floor, and that’s it, that’s where he’s staying. In part because he’s tired too, but mostly because Richie’s flopping forward. He pulls his back up to the side of the staircase and drags Richie into his lap, earning more cursing and weak flails. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Would you stop?” He gets one leg bent up to support Richie’s back while the other folds under Richie’s legs. It’s no use, of course, to keep Richie from falling. Even Eddie’s chest doesn’t slow Richie’s momentum. Richie’s giant and uncooperative and no longer awake, so Eddie puts his arms down and holds Richie in a hug.

“No more moving,” Richie mumbles in his sleep. “No more moving. Swear to God, you assholes try and move me…”   
  
Bill, who can’t hear any of this, “Is he comfortable like that?”   
  
Eddie pulls Richie’s glasses off with one hand. “He gets mad if I try to move him.” Even into a comfortable position, apparently, which sleeping against his chest must be because Richie isn’t sleep-swearing anymore. He isn’t anything. He’s limp and lying against Eddie’s chest, and his breathing is warm through the sweater Eddie’s wearing, and the smell of sewer and sweat is almost comforting. Eddie’s own eyes are slipping closed.

“You guys head upstairs. We’ll be up in a bit,” he says.

“No more moving!” Richie moans. He closes his eyes tight and shoves his face into Eddie’s chest and passes out again.

Eddie pats him on the head aggressively, lovingly. He looks Bill in the eyes. Looks them all in the eyes, promising them, “We’ll be up in a bit.”

They each give him a smile, one that warms the longer they’re taken in by the sight of him and Richie. “Yeah, yeah,” Eddie rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t really want them to stop. The way they look makes it real, makes the world outside of him and Richie seem irrelevant. Eddie doesn’t have to think about divorce or relocating or how fucking awful it’s going to be when TMZ finds out about them. He only has to tighten his hold on Richie and let his eyes close.

He opens his eyes when another person appears next to him. Ben’s there, his jacket off and coming to rest over half his chest, Eddie’s leg, and Richie’s torso. Bev joins after, settling in next to Ben. Mike and Bill share a smile and they come around to Eddie’s other side, jostling into position such that Richie speaks again.

“No more moving!” he says.

“Go to sleep, Richie,” Eddie tells him.

“I’m fucking trying!” He snuggles his face into Eddie’s chest again. “I’m fucking…”

He’s asleep before he can finish talking, and Eddie falls asleep shortly after that.

* * *

Happy Reading!


End file.
